Nouda's Revenge
by ano-nimmus
Summary: How do we know Nouda is gone? Nathaniel's come back in the most unexpected way. Kitty roams the world. Bartimaeus wonders. Now they must defeat Nouda once and for all. Chapter 15 is OUT! Please read and review.
1. Prologue: Creator's Note

What is a djinni? The other four main spirits were previously other things; an imp is a mischievous child who died young; a foliot is a mischievous child who died old; an afrit is the incarnation of fire, while the marid is of water. And again, it is asked: But what is the djinni? It is hard to say. There are those who live on this earth, and those who lived in the Other Place.

The one is the spirit of those who have vanished, but still long for the earth. They act during the night, disappearing with the first light of dawn. They control the ability to make themselves invisible and change shape; however, they are unable to cast spells.

Many of these earthen spirits are believed to be the cause of manias for some lunatics. However, this is incorrect. They can no more possess a man than they can protect themselves from their master without his true name.

The other is that of those who have vanished but do not care what happens. They are content to drift about in the Other Place, hoping they will not be summoned too many times. In this fourth installment we will most definitely speak of both types. I ask only one thing: if you read past this poor prologue, continue unto the end.

--The Creator


	2. Chapter 1: Bartimaeus

BARTIMAEUS

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I felt a prickle growing in my essence as Earth drew me down to its infernal boundaries. My mind spun as I concocted a form that would surely scare the wits out of whatever lily-livered magician had dared to summon Bartimaeus. Aha! I arranged myself just as I exploded into a room. It took me a only a moment to realize I was in…Mandrake's..office, if you could call it that; there had evidently just been some sort of culinary explosion on the desk. Only another moment passed before I realized that the food-decorated walls were now Miss Piper's.

"Wonderful," she said, sporting a wry grin. "A horned rabbit."

I looked around in pretend confusion, deciding to go for a cheap joke. "Oh, is that what I am? Oops. I was trying to do a horned gerbil. Maybe I did the transformation too quickly?"

"Maybe." She sighed. I had never seen her looking this worn out. She had always been perky and slightly childish (well, when you're five thousand years old it's hard to find someone who isn't by your standards), but now she looked a bit gray and totally overworked.

With that awareness in mind I chose to be especially nice to her. No flatulence bombs. "What does milady wish?" I asked in my politest voice, spiffing up my bunny image with a monocle.

She sighed again. "I need you to make sure the Commoners aren't holding any more demonstrations, or, or causing trouble of any kind. No, wait, I suppose you'd better make sure the same is true of the magicians now that the two peoples are equal." She sighed. "It seems so strange now… But at any rate, the committees signed a paper saying neither group would cause trouble for the other."

"You seem to be doing nicely," I said. "Do you have a leader?"

"No." This said vehemently. "Thank God." Suddenly she seemed curious. "By the way, how did you survive? You were inside Mr. Mandrake, weren't you? I was looking in Button's Spirit Encyclopedia when I saw your name still down as 'alive.'"

I felt a pang of…something, but tried to push it back. "He...Dismissed me. Right before Nouda attacked."

"I see," she said softly. For an instant we were both quiet, remembering, but then Miss Piper clapped her hands and looked up. "Better get to work," she told me. "I'm supposed to have the whole city patrolled by midnight."

I shrugged to the best of the tortoise's ability and quickly changed shape; now I was a magnificent golden eagle, as beautiful as it was terrifying.

"Um," said Miss Piper. "Maybe something a bit less noticeable?"

Now it was easier to shrug, and I changed into a slightly larger-than-normal sparrow. She waved me off with evident amusement and I flew off into the night.

I tried to do it quickly so that any Commoners able to spot magic would only catch the last glimpse of my essence. Yet there were still some who regarded me with slight suspicion, and I resolved to warn Piper not to send out too many spirits every week; the Commoners might get angry if they thought there were too many. And that could get very sticky with today's divided government.

I tried to avoid it, but when I passed over the ruins of the Glass Palace I couldn't help doing precisely what I had told myself not to do. I slowly drifted down behind the admirably shortened wall and changed shape. Now I was a tall, hooded man. I slinked behind some trees and then joined a group of tourists, who luckily didn't seem to see my true form. When the guide had finished ranting about how important to history this building was, one of the travelers asked, "Could we possibly go in?"

She considered. "I'm not sure. No one's ever asked, and there's no rule about it. I'll let you go in this once, but"—she cast him a mocking glance—"I'll blame you if my boss yells at me."

We all hurried in, and I wondered why I felt like walking around where a friend of mine (that is, a friend of mine who could be extremely unkind, stupid, and altogether moronic) had died. I felt the metal pulling my essence away, but somehow there was one thing I had to see. I found it quickly; a huge scorch mark, half-covered by debris, lay where Nathaniel and I had been standing the moment before he Dismissed me and died.

I swore first in Arabic, then French, then German, then in just about every language I could think of. Why'd you have to go and die?

The others around me seemed alarmed, but they were not forced to bear my presence anymore; it was only a moment longer before I fled.

When I arrived at Miss Piper's office, I gave her the report quickly: Nothing wrong except for some suspicious looks.

Then she Dismissed me and I floated gratefully back to the Other Place, where I was sure I could brood a bit easier.


	3. Chapter 2: Bartimaeus

**Here's the second chapter, redone (a bit). BTW, redoing most of the chapters here is my way of saying 'sorry I haven't udated in eight months'.**

So there I was. Mandrake had freed me, died, and I had lived to tell the tale and was now drifting about in the Other Place being too angry for my own good.

There had always been a chance...if he broken the staff and then thrown it in the general direction of Nouda, maybe we could have made it out before it exploded...or maybe not. I should be grateful, I realized. Maybe not for the pandemonium I had caused in the Other Place by killing so many spirits, (regrettably with Mandrake's help. Might've been something to go on my resume if I'd done it alone. Except for the small fact that I would be dead if I had attempted it without him) but for what he had given me, the very thing that Ptolemy had given me; life.

Of course, Ptolemy was still by far the better of the two, but for some reason Mandrake had freed me despite the fact that there was no love lost between us.

Okay, so there was the bit about holding back the Staff's power, but aside from that, what? _What?_

I sighed and let my thoughts drift only slightly less than I. I wondered how Kitty was; what was she doing, where was she? I suspected she had gone to a certain country—a certain city that I knew rather well.

Besides having more than one or two thoughts about Mandrake and yours truly. Mandrake more than I, I'm sorry to say.

And what of the government? Was it being swarmed over? Or had the Empire and the commoners finally agreed on something? I had picked up tidbits from Piper, but contrary to my nature I hadn't asked her full-on about it.

I tried to snap myself out of it; wondering too much about earth can get you down there even if you don't want to. But it was only a few minutes before I started wondering again.

I turned my thought back to Mandrake... no, Nathaniel. Nathaniel was the one who died, I decided. Not John Mandrake. Something tweaked at my memory when I thought of Nat; something painful. I pulled myself together again. (though this time it was literally. My essence had started to separate since I was thinking too much.)

"Something painful," I said out loud, remembering what I had been thinking before.

"You're right," a hoarse voice said behind me. "It was painful."

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**Well, I didn't change that one too much, but I did. Believe me.**


	4. Chapter 3: Kitty

**KITTY**

**3**

Kitty twisted herself around on her bed in Bruges, trying to get comfortable.

For two months she had not wanted to do magic, ever since she had summoned Bartimaeus. But this morning, she had felt a sudden urge to do it again, as if she had seen a person from her old sixth grade class and just had to go up and say hello. She had drawn the pentacle, lit the candles, and filled the bowls of incense.

Now she was looking for a good spirit. She had decided to test herself by summoning the five main types, one after the other, and see how many she could summon without tiring too quickly.

She started the incantation, throwing in the name Dambert, and an imp appeared with a scorch of the floor. She talked to it for a moment and then spoke the Dismissal.

Foliot went by without any trouble, but when she dismissed the djinni she felt a bone-weary, I-need-to-lie-down-and-take-a-nap feeling (he had been particularly troublesome and she had been forced to use the Punitive Jab twice).

She sighed and started the summoning of the afrit, Katur. When she appeared, the floor was more scorched than ever and Kitty doubted she could pick up the heavy book of spirits, let alone dismiss Katur.

She sat down in the pentacle. The afrit took her shape and sat down as well. "Well," the afrit said coolly. "Never been summoned by a Commoner before."

That was when Kitty fainted.

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Kitty groaned and sat up. Blinking, she looked up at three faces: Jakob, his uncle, and... the afrit? All of them looked at her anxiously. _Wait a second. A afrit worried about a human? _

She almost laughed at the thought. "C'mon Kitty." Jakob held out his hand and she took it and stood up. "Is there anything you need?"

She shook her head but changed her mind almost immediately. "Bed would be nice." He led her over to the bed and she lay down, feeling exhausted. The marid sat next to her, grinding something a bowl of pottery.

After a moment she offered an odd-looking paste to Kitty. "Wait a minute!" Kitty yelped, sitting up. She immediately regretted it and lay down again.

She started to say something, but then she felt herself turn first red, then green. _Human Christmas tree, _she thought apprehensively. The marid noticed as well and quickly Summoned a bucket, which Kitty subsequently offered a gift of bile. She sat up again, and this time around she didn't have time to lie down. She felt everything go black.


	5. Chapter 4: Nouda

**Calling all reviewers to attention!I am unfortunate enough not to have the actual books with me here in Korea, so please have mercy on me when you review. I might accidentally make a few absolutely repulsive mistakes.**

**Disclaimer: Just say this disclaimer works for the first few chapters as well, shall we? Jonathan Stroud owns all recognizable Bartimaeus characters and the books as well. ****I just write the story.**

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**NOUDA**

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He was a blob. That was it. A shapeless green blob. He, Nouda, most fearsome spirit in the Other Place, destroyer of entire civilizations, was reduced to a SHAPELESS GREEN BLOB!

Nevertheless, he smacked his lips happily, grateful that the shaman and his camel had given his essence a chance to grow in this infernal heat-stricken desert. _That stupid Mandrake boy, _he cursed. He could not remember much, but what he could he sometimes wanted to banish, to dismiss as easily as the magicians had... Pain...

_He remembered rushing towards Mandrake, claws and tentacles outstretched. He began to take a swipe when there had been an explosion that gave him pause. There was the boy, leaning heavily on Gladstone's Staff. He began to feel a little afraid. Why? He had been blasted before; he had spent entire minutes absorbing the meager blasts sent his way! And yet he was afraid. Ah. The spirits were struggling. He could see it. And the boy...would he dare release them? He would die as well; but Nouda could tell the boy would do it. An explosion. The boy had vanished, leaving nothing but a blackened circle. He laughed. That was before he felt the rumbling. He looked up to see the metal structure falling on him. It was draining him... he needed the Other Place... Pain... Pain... PAIN...! So...much...PAIN!_

And yet he had survived. Somehow, as soon as he was small and fluid enough, he had painfully slinked away to nurse his surviving –yet torn- essence.

The metal had pulled at his essence, pulled at him. Resolutely, he had dragged himself on. He had fainted, he remembered that much. And somehow he had ended up in the desert. One mystery after another.

Now he was slowly building up his essence again by returning to his favorite hobby: consuming people. He tried grimly to change into a worm, but he only succeeded in flickering. No luck. Damnation.

He leaped on a sparrow and scuffled with it for a moment for devouring it. He settled back, his sudden burst of energy gone. Only a few spoonfuls of essence, but it helped a bit. Two weeks he had been doing this. It felt wrong. He didn't feel that he shouldn't eat; rather, he felt he should be eating _more. _This was no place for Nouda, greatest of spirit warriors, leader of the rebellion which had so nearly torn apart the magicians who tortured them, put them through endless pain!

He spied a tribesman coming, undoubtedly to lead the great shaman to the village to heal the inflictions there. He rode another camel. Good. Two things to eat.

He sluggishly hid behind a cactus and waited.

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**So? What did you think? **

**Note: I like reviews! Hint hint.**


	6. Chapter 5: Bartimaeus

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Hi. **

**Before you grab me by the neck, hang me on the gallows, chop me up in little pieces, feed me to a dragon, and then resurrect me and do it all over again, let me explain WHY I have not updated for so long. **

**Reason 1: Too much homework.**

**Reason 2: Because I keep getting so caught up in books that I forget to write.**

**and Reason 3: Because I was totally undecisive about what to write. I still think what I wrote is lame, but I didn't to keep you waiting much longer.**

**Also, I apologize, but no matter how hard I rack my brains I can't think of anything funny. And I am also doing away with **

**_(1 these)_**

**Also, I am incredibly sorry to those people who I promised a Nathaniel chapter this time. I promise I will do everything in my power to make the next one a Natty.**

**Finally, I am sorry to Andy Filarwitz, but I just don't have the patience to make every section where someone speaks in the Other Place italicized.**

**So here's the new chappie.**

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_Bartimaeus_

I turned around and floated backwards a bit to get a better view of the newcomer. A rabbit. With webbed feet. And a duck's bill. Either this guy was _really _new to the Other Place, or he had a _really _odd sense of humor.

"Good day," said the rabbit coolly, if still a little hoarsely. "I know you, I think. You are Bartimaeus? Sakhr al-Jinni, N'gorso the Mighty, the Serpent of Silver Plumes? Who has rebuilt the walls of Uruk, Carnak, and Prague? Who has twenty names in as many languages? Servant to such great entities as Solomon, Ptolemy, Mandrake, and Zarbustibal?" He recited this all in a bored manner, as if he had heard it a million times.

"Whoa, boy," I said, alarmed. "Mandrake? Great entity? Hah!" I doubled over and forced myself to spew out some false laughter. That was one of the things about Nat's death, though. I had had more than two thousand years to get over Ptolemy's death, so the worst _t__hat _could do was sting. But Nathaniel's death had been around two months ago, give or take a few days. It _hurt._

The rabbit watched me silently the entire time I was laughing, and when I finally straightened, brushing away fake tears of laughter, he said, "Well, are you or aren't you?" He sounded rather annoyed.

"Well, I will be if you leave out the Mandrake bit. Horrible. Ugh."

"Oh," said the rabbit, and I was surprised to hear a slight trace of disappointment in his voice.

"Who are you, anyway?" I asked, trying not to seem too eager. "And what do you want of me?"

The rabbit didn't say anything for along time, and just as I was thinking of stuffing him into a pot and making stew out of him, he replied, in an annoyingly slow voice, "Ah... uh... Do the words, 'I am Nathaniel in djinni form' strike terror in your heart?" He cleared his throat as the full meaning of what he said began to dawn on me. "Because they rather do mine."

Okay. How would _you_ have reacted if an apparently mutated rabbit stood before you and and announced that it was your boss from your first job at Baskin Robbins? Well?

Here's what to do:

Step 1: Stare disblievingly at the figure.

Step 2: Repeat what was just said in highly nasal voice.

Step 3: Scream loudly.

I had heard these rules a million times, but somehow I got steps two and three mixed up. So it went sort of like this:

"I"-SCREAM-" am"-SCREAM-" Nathaniel"-SCREAM-"in"-SCREAM-"djinni form."-SCREAMSCREAMSCREAMSCREAM.

When my unusually strong wits had returned, I stood firmly in front of the rabbit (who I will call 'the rabbit' unless he proves he is Mandrake) and demanded, "How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"You don't," said the rabbit. "You may ask me a question, if you want. After that, I must simply hope you believe me." And he was silent, looking at me in the exact same way Mandrake used to when he was attempting to look as if I were merely a fly he could flick of his sleeve whenever he wanted to, when I was really frustrating him to no degree.

I was halfway convinced. But what could I use to trip him up and prove that he wasn't really Nathaniel?

Got it.

"Now," I said. "I'm not totally positive of you yet, so I'm going to ask you a few questions. What form was I in when I discovered your true name?'

"Spider."

That was no big deal. Now I thought about it, it was a stupid question. He could've just been spying on Mandrake's old master, saw a spider wave at Nathaniel, and just now guessed it was me.

I went through a list of several questions, but they all sounded as stupid as the first. Then I had it. I saw the chance and pounced on it. Apprehensively sucking in my ethereal stomach, I let out a deep breath and asked:

"What were your last words?"

The rabbit was silent for a long time. Then he began to grow in size, swiftly recreating his shape into that of a man with a large gash in his side. Nathaniel, I realized.

With a twinkle in his eye, the (former) rabbit lay down on the ground, clutched his side in the exact same way I had felt us do when we were together, and said, in a slow monotone, "Say hello to Kitty for me."

And the world's weight crashed down around me.

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**Well, hope you liked it. I've tried to make it longer than the others and I think I've succeeded.**

**I know it must sound ridiculous, but I feel very appreciated. ****Four people have this story on their favorites and eleven on an alert list. Plus five people have ME in general on their favorites, and four on Author Alert! I know these statistics are absolutely nothing compared to a million others, but it still makes me proud.**

**--TOF **

**P.S. Please! I'm begging you guys! I have had 1,188 hits and only twenty-two reviews. PLEASE R&R!**


	7. Chapter 6: Nathaniel

**You know what? Thirty-seven reviews can really make a guy feel appreciated. And just because you reviewed me, I have decided to update _RIGHT_ here, _RIGHT_ now. **

**Flashbacks are _italicized _and centered**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Bartimaeus, his story, or anything else in the world except some Pringles.**

**So yeah. Here-eth be-eth the-eth nexteth chaptereth.**

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Nathaniel was incredibly disconcerted. For one thing, why in the _hell _was he a djinni? Last he'd checked, he'd been human. Not to mention dead. What was more, Bartimaeus wasn't being at all helpful. He sighed inwardly. He had been hoping that Bartimaeus would kow something about this inexplicable change, but he was evidently confused as well. 

He had his head in his hands, crouching on the ground, which would have looked much more dramatic if his head hadn't kept on sinking through. He was muttering loudly, "What have I done, what have I DONE?" Maybe a little _too _loudly.

At last Bartimaeus raised his head. Only a little bit, but Nathaniel could see the dozen or so emotions crossing Ptolemy's face. Nathaniel was looking as impatient as a rabbit can look, and when Bartimaeus moaned and began to put his head down again, he quickly asked, "Do you have any idea how I got like this?"

"Like what?" came Bartimaeus' voice.

"Or why I'm here?"

"Where?"

Nathaniel was annoyed. "_HOW did I become a djinni, and HOW did I get to the Other Place?"_

"Well, you seem to be in the Other Place because you're a djinni."

Nathaniel was about to explode when Bartimeus put his head up. "As to why you are a djinni," he said, "I know little more than you do."

"But you know something!" exclaimed Nathaniel, in excitement.

Bartimaeus hesitated. "I might," he said. "I think I was already remembering something before you came."

"Yes, I heard."

There was a silence as Nathaniel waited. He could tell Bartimaeus wanted to say something, but didn't know how to say it. After a long, silent struggle, Bartimaeus sighed and said, "I don't know. I might remember something more if you tell me the entire story, from beginning to end. There could be something crucial in it."

Nathaniel was startled, and though he tried not to show it, burst out, "You mean you don't remember?"

He received a cold look for that remark, as Bartimaeus said, "From the pain I manage to remember, and what little you have let me in on so far, mostly that it's painful, I can imagine it might be something a spirit would want _not _to remember."

Nathaniel looked down, feeling like a seven-year-old reprimanded for stealing a cookie.

"So tell me," said Bartimaeus, his ethereal form leaing forward. And Nathaniel began.

_After I released the spirits, there was crashing, screaming, anger, pain. I could feel emotions, both my own and Nouda's, with clarity. There was space, there was time. My body squeezed itself together, stretched enormously, and pain lanced through me like a thousand tiny darts. White mist obscured my vision, and I was ripped apart. Thought was gone. Pain was there. I was slowly sewn together again, and then I was awake. The mist was still there, but there were defined shapes. I looked down and saw something around my foot...except both the tag and the foot seemed to be as white as the mist around me. On it were the words, "Nathaniel, _

_Spirit,_

_Djinni,_

_Sixth level. _

_Previously John Mandrake._

_Initiation Status: No choice."_

_As I watched, the tag slowly melted into my form. I was a djinni. _

Nathaniel sat down and shifted his form to that of his own. "Salvage anything?" he asked, his voice oddly strained as he remembered. He looked over at Bartimaeus, who seemed to be ignoring him. "Bartimaeus?" He floated over and looked down. It looked almost as if Bartimaeus was asleep, but his eyes were wide open. His eyes were lost in memory. Terrible, terrible memory. And worse still, Nathaniel knew what he was remembering.

He had gone through it himself.

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**Okay, maybe it's a lame end. I tried not to make it too cliffie-like, but heck. R&R, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!**

**As refloc, on my Favorites would say: "You who do not review: your evils will condemn you on the day of judgement!"**


	8. Chapter 7: Kitty

**Some _slight _one-sided KittyJakob in this chapter. **

**Disclaimer: I own nothing that is owned by Mr. Jonathon Stroud, and he owns nothing that is owned by me. There. Now we begin!**

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It was hazy. Everything was hazy. She was moaning, and she was running, and then she was hanging over an abyss, just hanging, hanging... And then she was falling, down, down, down, down, down...

With a small screech, Kitty woke and sat up, feeling quite violent. She looked around and was relieved to find she was in her own bed in Bruges. She lay down again, feeling a bit nauseous. There was a knock at the door and she called out weakly, "Come in."

It was Jakob. "You all right?" he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. He looked at her concernedly. "You look a little pale."

Kitty laughed softly. "I'm surprised I lasted all the way to afrit, actually. I wasn't expecting to go anywhere beyond djinni."

Jakob looked nervous as she mentioned the spirit names. "Would you like a bowl of broth?" he asked, to change the subject. "That demon...ah...afrit made it, and it doesn't taste like anything you've ever had before."

"Sure," Kitty said. There was silence for a moment. Then, "I'll be after that soup now," said Jakob. He looked at her a moment longer, then suddenly leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. His hair brushed her brow, and she was aware how soft his lips felt. Jakob stood straight again, his face red.

Kitty was in shock for a moment. She didn't _want _that from Jakob! And she had been sure that he didn't want that from her. He looked straight at her. Before she could say anything, he muttered "Sorry" under his breath and sped out of the room. He didn't come back with the soup.

_That was wise of him,_ Kitty reflected, three broken vases later. _I could have _killed _him just then.

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Kitty was loathe to go down for the family's customarily early supper, but she needn't have worried. Jakob avoided her, and she was left in peace after an unusually quiet supper. She suspected that Jakob had told them what had happened.

The afrit had vanished back to the Other Place after attending to her needs; Jakob had, unwittingly, broken the pentacle. She was just lucky that the afrit hadn't been a violent one.

Although, under normal circumstances she would have liked to stay, the the new factor of Jakob's feelings threw everything into disarray.

She threw herself on the bed. What could she do? Who could she turn to?

It was times like these that she wished Nathaniel were here. She usually never allowed herself to daydream about what might have been; she didn't want to, couldn't afford to. She didn't even know if she _loved_ him, for God's sake, or if he had loved her! They had _liked _each other, certainly. But love? It was a confusing thing, ever going its' own ways, rarely remaining as others thought it best to be. Love was a powerful force, and a frightening one.

What was love?

Sighing she turned her head and looked out the window, turning to the rapidly fading light for protection from her hopes, her fears, and her sadness.

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Days passed. It wasn't as enjoyable as it had been before, when Jakob had shown no feelings. Kitty decided to leave.

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The sharp smell of salt permeated the air around Kitty as she walked up the gangway onto the ship to Egypt. She didn't look back until she was on the deck of the _Alexandria. _Jakob looked back at her mournfully; his uncle looked indifferent. They were the only ones out of the large family here in Bruges who had come to see her off. 

Jakob's uncle had come only because he had had to drive. Kitty sighed, waved once, and walked away from the walls of the ship. She wasn't really sorry that she was leaving. The past few days had been almost icy between her in the family, and Jakob's 'I-am-a-lost-puppy-can-you-please-help-me?' look hadn't helped matters much either.

She managed to find her room. After finally figuring out which way the key went, and which way the door swung (gaining a bruise on her forehead in the process), she walked in, closed the door, and lay down on her bed. She didn't bother to kick her shoes off.

So now she was going. To the land of Ptolemy.

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**Voila! And now chapter 7 is complete! Hope you enjoy it.**

**R&R.**

**--Fox**


	9. Chapter 8: Bartimaeus

**Sniff. I received but four reviews. Or three. I don't know which. One of those. Anyway, something like that number. Chapter 8 is here! Well, FanFiction will call it the ninth chapter, but the first chap. is a prologue, so this is ACTUALLY chapter 8! **

**Thank you to numerous faithful reviewers, whose names I will not mention here but who I hope know that they are one of the ones I'm talking about.**

**Extra Note: If you don't mind, I could REALLY use some reviews on these two stories: **

**Greek Mythology, True Stories of Misunderstood Beasts, for the second chapter.**

**and Harry Potter,** **In Which the Potters Are Betrayed, for the first chapter.**

**Pretty please?**

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I was summoned twice that day, the first time being Ms. Piper. That was getting to be normal. I couldn't be sure from the Other Place, but I think she summoned me every day. She generally had small tasks for me; scouting, or picking up items she had ordered, or even taking out the garbage.

I protested the first time she asked me to do the latter. She looked at me, and I could see how tired she was, how unused to a high-standing position (she had been promoted after the grand battle to Minister of Information. Not many magicians were left; there tended not to be once a magician-djinni combo came along and slaughtered them all.).

I didn't even whimper the next time she asked.

So her summoning was normal. She had me go to the grocery store and pick up a sandwich from the deli section. A couple of the Commoners blinked at me in surprise (you didn't generally see a six-foot tall iguana doing the shopping), but they didn't throw stones as they might have before the alliance.

And then there was the second summoning.

Jane Farrar did not normally summon me. She summoned me once, a _long _time ago, before she became so high ad mighty. She must have been around thirteen. And she probably didn't remember me, but boy, did I remember her! I tried to cheek her, and do you know what she did? Well, I won't tell you. Let's just say what remained of my essence wasn't fit for children's eyes

I was in the Other Place for the time it would take to blink, and then I was being sucked down to Earth again.

Farrar had _bad _taste. I felt like retching when I saw the shade of pink on her walls. And the garish green pillows on her bed? Hideous.

Actually, at that point I didn't know it was Farrar who had summoned me. Not until I heard a voice which said, with far more drama than was needed, "Turn and bow to your master, the Prime Minister Jane Farrar." I changed my shape immediately into the large yellowish, monster-in-the-closet that every child fears. The form barely fit in the pentacle, but as long as I left off the tail, I was fine.

Jane was looking as intoxicating (if you could call it that) as ever. Clothes in the latest fashion, makeup and lipstick applied perfectly; she would have looked like a right doll if she hadn't had her brow creased in a way that somehow commanded the attention of all who gazed at it.

"You are Bartimaeus," she said. It was most definitely not a question.

"Yes'm," I said. "Also N'gorso the Mighty 'n' Sakhr Al-Jinni 'n' the Serpent o' Silver Plumes... Him as spoke with Sol'mon 'n' Zarbust'bal, an' mebbe even rebuilt a few walls here and there." Don't ask why I suddenly slipped into a country twang. I suppose it was because nobody of that stature would generally speak to her, and I had the feeling she would think of me as dirty and Dismiss me as quickly as possible.

She wrinkled her nose, but unfortunately, did not send me back to the Other Place. "You served the magician Mandrake, for some time, I believe? You are the frog who he Dismissed when we could have squeezed out the information? The one I summoned when I was fourteen years old?"

I was startled. She actually remembered? It was odd that she had turned out to be a year older than I thought, when Mandrake generally looked older than his years. So much for the master age-guesser.

"Wha' choo want o' me?" I asked suspiciously, sticking to my countryside accent. Maybe she would get tired of it?

Sigh. I live in hope.

She shrugged. "Information."

I scratched my head, and on an impulse, turned into a straw-chewing, straw-hatted, pimply, giant kid farmer. In dirty overalls. With rips all over. And with cuts and scratches all over my hands. I love shapeshifting.

She glared at me. "Change that shape," she commanded me. I scratched my head again.

I _love _shapeshifting.

I turned into a giant flea. It barely fit in the pentacle.

Her scowl increased, and she began to mutter the words of a spell under her breath; meekly, I changed into a chauffeur in an elegant Armani suit, fancy cuff links and all. She smiled.

I didn't.

She snapped her fingers imperiously, and a foliot, visible only as a manservant up to the third plane, brought her a chair. She sat impatiently and looked at me. Just looked at me. "So," I said weakly, "what does madame wish to know?" I'm pretty sure she wasn't married, but I had the feeling that 'mademoiselle' would be too young-sounding for her, and that she would have blasted me on the spot.

She ignored the title and leaned forward in her chair, eyeing me like I was an especially juicy looking rabbit that she, the eagle, wanted to crunch on. At last she spoke: "Did John Mandrake survive?"

I was a little surprised, but I took the question without a flicker of facial motion. "Well," I said, trying to sound both respectfully sarcastic, "if a thousand or so tons of steel and glass fell on _you_, what would you be like, ma'am?"

Her face contorted. "Give me a straight answer, dammit!" she hissed. "Or I'll blast you worse than I did when I was fourteen."

I drew back a little. "I don't know for sure," I said quietly, "but I doubt he is." I was curious as to why she was asking, but I didn't want to anger her again. One little magical strike from her was enough for an eternal lifetime, thank you very much. Luckily for me, she answered the question without my having to ask her. "His body wasn't found," she said, and I was shocked to see hope, and a sort of lingering sadness in her eyes, thought most of her was still her familiar haughty, proud self.

"Crushed to bits of dust, in my opinion, ma'am," I said.

She was angry again almost instantly. She swore at me in a high, screeching voice, then spoke the Dismissal. As I departed for the Other Place, I saw something that shocked me more than the time the Maharajah of Kantu had asked me to take him to the center of the earth, more than when I had seen Nathaniel again a a djinni, more even than when Ptolemy had explained to me his intention to go to the Other Place. And as I joined once more with the mist of the Other Place, my ethereal head was whirling in shock.

Jane Farrar had been crying.

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Ha-ha! Cliffie! Please review, if you possibly can. And I _know_ most of you can.

Next chapter will be either Nouda or Kitty.

-Fox


	10. Chapter 9: Nouda

**Do you think I am in fact Jonathon Stroud, disguising myself on the internet as some tall kid who likes to write? Do you? Huh?**

**This chapter is pretty short because it's mainly just Nouda thinking. But mebbe I can stretch it out a bit. Dunno. Reviews will be greatly appreciated. **

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Nouda was feeling euphoric. He had just digested an elephant (along with the tourists riding it), and he was starting to regain his ability to change shape. Already he had trouble containing all of his power into the shape of a sparrow, and was forced to take on a jungle cat's form.

He was, at the time, deep in a jungle. A frog bounced off of a leaf and onto him. Still happy, he allowed teh frog to escape with its life, though not with his forelegs. Blood fell from the frog's wounds, dripping like a weeping widow receiving news of her only son's death. Razor sharp teeth grinned as Nouda gazed down at the creature before bounding away.

As he ran through the forest, over logs and under trees, past cobras and rafflesias and hungry alligators, he thought, with a sudden sharp needle-prick in the back of his mind, of Mandrake and Bartimaeus. Had they survived? Bartimaeus, he knew had been dismissed, but perhaps the palace had fallen before he had escaped to the Other Place. mandrake had undoubtedly died; any power he might have had would have been drained away by Gladstone's creation.

Bartimaeus he would deal with, if he came across him. Were his servants alive? Had any of them escaped? Or had each and every one been murdered during Mandrake and Bartimaeus's onslaught? He would have to look into that.

He heard something stalking towards him. No doubt he was on another cat's territory. He smiled, turned and leaped through the bushes.

He emerged soon after. He was still a jungle cat. But now he was twice his former size.

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**Didn't want to keep you waiting much longer.**

**I'm also mad at somebody who wrote some story called 'Natalormios' or something like that. But I don't have proof that he copied my story idea, so all I can do is fume quietly in the corner.**

**Ah well.**

**Ah well.**

**Please review! If you don't, I'll start saying things like, 'I won't upload the next chapter until I get number of reviews.**

**So pretty please?**


	11. Chapter 10: Kitty

**Okay, this is a Kitty chapter. Jarlaxle has been urging me to update more frequently, and here is my attempt at it. Tell me if my similes and/or metaphors are alright, will you? My Humanities teacher has been emphasizing similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia (sp?), and such. Any-hooo...**

**Disclaimer: anything recognizable of Jonathon Stroud's is, obviously, his.**

**Claimer: Hiranandani's Camels and anything else not recognizable as Monsieur Stroud's, is mine. Except for the name Hiranandani, which belongs to one of my classmates.**

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"Welcome to Port Said, Egypt. Please enjoy your period of stay."

A woman's voice floated through the ship speakers like a cool breath of wind. Any cool air would have been welcome to make its way in; on the _S.S. Mana_, there were no air conditioners, no fans, and even on the deck an anvil of heat and humidity weighed down on the ship's occupants.

Kitty was stretched out on the bed of her small room. For some reason, where light covers were called for, the ship had supplied thick woolen blankets that itched infernally and in no way helped cool her off. She sighed as the voice diverted the river of her thoughts from all her old adventures, from the time she'd stolen her first elemental sphere with Fred and Stanley to the removal of the Animating Parchment to her imprisonment in the Hall of Statues.

She pushed herself up and made her way to the small closet where her suitcase was stored. Most of her things were already in it, crammed in like chestnuts in a Thanksgiving turkey. She dragged it out and placed it on her bed, moving as quickly as possible; she wanted to be off the ship and on the camel train to Alexandria as fast as possible.

Luckily, all that was missing from the leather 'turkey' was her toothbrush. She snatched it off of the shelf in the bathroom and walked out the door, stuffing it into her bag as she went. Door locked, key in hand, suitcase rolling along the carpeted floors behind her, she walked toward the gangplank. She handed her room key to an attendant and walked down into Port Said.

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She looked left, then right as she crossed the street. _What is it about that rule? _she thought. _Why not right, then left? _But she was eager to get to the station for the camel train; she shrugged it off and, looking at her map, went north along a narrow road and ended up on another main street. Left, right, left again, two minutes straight walk, and she was there. A large two-story house, where a faded red-and-yellow sign hung from outstretched iron rods, bearing the curly black words, **_Hiranandani's Camels; Passage Between All Towns and Cities, Only One Hundred EGP! _**The walls on the outside were made up of boards, and three camels were tied to stakes hammered down in front of the shop. 

Kitty remembered from her reading that EGP meant 'Egyptian Pounds', and that it was equivalent to about eight Great Britain Pounds. She suddenly realized that she hadn't converted a single penny into EGP. Mentally smacking herself on the head, she entered the shop. She would ask the owner where she could switch currencies.

It was a small place, with nothing but a bare wooden counter. A single door was open just beyond it. Kitty walked over to it and poked her head through. To the left was a staircase, and to the right a screen door. Warm sunlight shone through. She opened the door and walked through, tensed like a deer, ready to explain if someone yelled at her for trespassing.

No one did.

Turning a corner, she instead almost bumped into a young man washing a camel with a bucket of water and a sponge. "Oh!" she exclaimed.

He turned to her and grinned. He had very white teeth, and Kitty was suddenly very self-conscious of her appearance. She smiled back, embarassed. She couldn't help noticing that he was very handsome; his dark skin gleamed, as did his afore-mentioned teeth. His black hair was curly, as if someone had put his hair in rollers before he was born, but Kitty could tell his was natural. He was wearing tan shorts and a hot pink T-shirt.

"Excuse me," she said. "I'm looking for Mr..." She consulted her pocket notebook and with difficulty, pronounced his name. "...Hee...ra...non...dah...nee..." She looked up. "Was that right?" _I sound like a little girl,_ she thought.

His grin flashed wider. "I am a Mr. Hiranandani, but I think you must mean my father."

"I suppose I do," Kitty said slowly.

He looked at her curiously. "You're wondering about the T-shirt, aren't you?" he asked. "Westerners always do, but in the Middle East and Asia we don't have 'boy' colors or 'girl' colors. And pink is my favorite color," he added ruefully. "Maybe you think it's odd..."

Kitty shook her head, and her mind cleared a bit. "Not really," she replied. She noticed that she had unconsciously sucked in her stomach. She let it out again, and a brief scowl appeared on her face. It was all very well to be a bit stricken with Nthaniel; he was _dead!_ He was heroic, dying for the glorious cause of saving the entire bloody world, after changing from a political man with a mind of ice into a metaphorically rosy-cheeked and kind young man.

Someone _alive _really didn't suit her, said her brain, but her stupid (in her mind, anyhow) hormones said otherwise.

Seeing she wasn't about to speak further, young Mr. Hiranandani half-ran through the courtyard, back into the house and up the stairs Kitty had seen earlier. She heard Arabic, a tongue that utterly confused her, slipping between them like a fish slipping through one pair of hands into another. A moment later another man came out. "Hello," he said, speaking with a thick accent that made it sound as if he were talking with a swollen tongue. "This my son, Lavin," he said. "I Mr. Tutan Hiranandani. You Ms. Kitty Jones?"

"Er..." she mumbled, for some reason in awe of the slightly pudgy man standing before her. He gave off an aura of power that utterly defeated any purpose her mind had. She struggled for words like a drowning sailor for life. "Yes," she said at last. "I am Kitty Jones. I signed up for room and board for tonight and a... a guide-on-a-camel for tomorrow afternoon, to Alexandria."

To tell the truth, she could have taken the ship directly to Alexandria, but she had decided that if she was going to be visiting Egypt, she might as well ride a camel. Most people on the internet warned the general public of the greasy camel handlers that, after taking you around the pyramids or whatever, they made you pay to get back to your bus as well. However, after much searching, which led her to the eighty-ninth page of the Google search, she had found a post mentioning a good, reliable cael service in Port Said.

So here she was.

"Ya, ya..." he clucked. "Lavin will take you to your room. Yes?" he said, looking at Lavin.

He nodded in satisfaction without listening for Lavin's answer. "Carry on," he said. "I need nap, I old, see?"

Kitty looked over him in surprise. He didn't look old in the least. Yes, paunchiness in his stomach area loudly proclaimed that old age was coming closer, but he didn't look _old_. Evidently oblivious to her scrutiny, Mr. Hiranandani made a beeline for the stairs, humming what sounded like 'Toxic'.

Lavin looked embarrassed. "He just discovered pop music," he explained. "Whenever we pass a record shop, he'll drag me in and then dither about whether he should get Green Day or U2. Then in the end, he'll get both."

Kitty suddenly felt very tired. Lavin noticed. "You're swaying on your feet," he scolded her. "You need a nap."

"But I've hardly seen anything yet!" Kitty protested. "I want to see _something _of the city before I leave!"

Lavin sighed. "Tell you what," he said. "Dad and I can't cook, and Mama died a while back"--he said this so nonchalantly, as if he were too used to it to care much, that Kitty felt a pang in her heart--"so we always eat at a restaurant. If you take a nap now, I'll take you to a nightclub afterwards. We can party like maniacs, come back late, and sleep until an hour or so before you have to leave."

Kitty frowned. "Don't expect me to wear anything skimpy--" she started.

Lavin interrupted her: "A revealing mini-skirt is the last thing on my mind, I promise you."

Kitty smiled. "Then it's a deal," she consented. They shook on it. Then Lavin took her elbow and led her up to her room.

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**Thar she blows, folks. Next up... Nathaniel, coming sooner or later to a website near you!**

**Awright... Y'know, I might update faster if you guys REVIEWED more...!**

**AN**


	12. Chapter 11: Mixture

**Well, this was going to be a fully Nathaniel chapter, but I have had requests to have something 'happen', so in order for that wish to be fulfilled I am doing this chapter from three point-of-views.**

**By the way, there's a Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End input. Sort of. It's changed a bit, but try to find it. (I loved the movie! It takes first place out of the three in my opinion, with the first in second and the second in third. And the song 'Hoist the Colors' is totally my favorite! I sing it every morning and annoy the heck out of my mom.) XD**

**Disclaimer: Anything which was earlier mentioned in Jonathon Stroud's three works of art is his, anything which wasn't belong to the person whose lines you are currently reading.**

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**i - Bartimaeus**

I knew I was going faster than light already, but I urged myself faster. I had to tell Nathaniel... What? What did I have to tell him? That Farrar had summoned me to ask about him? That she had been crying when I left? That she had treated me like mud on the soles of her shoes?

Would he even care about any of it?

_No_, I decided. _I won't tell him. He doesn't need to know. Maybe someday I will, but now is not the time_.

Then I was there, back in the Other Place, and Nathaniel was by me, lying on his back in mid-air (Sort of. Hard to tell in that big vortex I call home.) "Anyone I know?" he asked lazily. He still hadn't been summoned, and he always asked me for any news I was able to garner from my forays down to Earth (hey, down-to-earth, get it?).

I paused. I contemplated tormenting him by saying 'yes' and then not telling him who, but eventually decided upon embracing that most ancient of spirit/human/Bartimaeus traditions: lying.

"No."

"Sure?"

I scoffed, putting in as much heart as I could into the action. "Do you happen to know an old African shaman around seven feet tall with ears like toadstools?"

Nathaniel thought a minute and said, "Yes."

I felt my eyes bulging, which I meant to do, obviously, because I had to take a shape to do it. Want to know my shape? Think Kermit. "You do?" I gasped out at last.

Nathaniel's ethereal form shrugged. "When I was in the government I met an man like that. My counterpart in the Zimbabwe government or some such country."

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**ii - Kitty**

She set off the next day with the two Mr. Hiranandanis, a camel for each of them and two extras for luggage (of course there had been more than just the two camels in front). Kitty was amazed by how little the men were bringing. Food, mostly, and a change of clothes. Her own bags took up most of the first luggage camel's back and all of the second's.

In the end, though, she was glad of their foresight, because once lunchtime arrived she realized that she herself had brought nothing at all edible. Clothes, books, and other necessaries (well, of _course_ books are necessaries to the true reader) took up her considerably-sized suitcases.

As she ate, her mind drew her unwillingly to the events of the previous night.

She had worn a light blue t-shirt with the words **_WATCH OUT, HERE COMES A HOT BABE!_** traced in sequins, along with a black skirt that went just below her knees. She hadn't chosen the shirt herself (her mother had given it to her, for some reason, just around the time she joined up with the Resistance), and under normal circumstances she would never have worn it, but it seemed the appropriate thing to wear to a nightclub. Lavin was likewise wearing a shirt with words on it. Black words on a white background; **_THIS SHIRT WAS MADE TO DISTRACT GIRLS WHILE I LOOK AT THEIR CHESTS._** She had laughed, and he had laughed at hers, his lingering a little too long on _her_ chest.

She flushed at that last memory.

She had gotten drunk, she knew that much. In the morning she had a pounding headache, and Tutan had given her and Lavin some medicine of some sort which had tasted of peaches. Thankfully, the ache throbbing in her temples had soon vanished.

She finished her meal, pita bread with some cheese and dried tomatoes, plus a portion of water (there were stops along the way where you could get more food and water, but Tutan said you could never be too careful, so what they had was careully rationed). There was no plate, and no washing up to do. There was nothing to wash _with_, except for their drinking water, but once more, Tutan had refused. "I repeat once," he said. "_We must be careful with supplies! _Could be sandstorm, bandits-"

"There are still bandits nowadays?" interrupted Kitty. "Are you sure you don't mean terrorists?"

Lavin was sitting facing a lovely purplish-red sunset as the sun sank toward the horizon like a sinking, golden soccer ball. Overhearing, he said gravely, "There are always bandits, Kitty."

It looked like he was about to say more, but Tutan continued. "Bandits are people who wait by roads to stop ve-vehicles"-he struggled with the word-"be they wood cart or metal car. They..." He halted, obviously struggling with the language, and Lavin once more took over.

"The only difference 'nowadays' as you put it, is that tomb robbers weren't fitted with machine guns." Kitty almost laughed, but Lavin's face was deadly serious.

Then she thought about the journey ahead. "We aren't going to...er, meet any..." She looked at them again, and changed the sentence. "...Are we?"

"Maybe," said Tutan, shrugging.

"Probably," amended Lavin.

Tutan waved him off like a fly. Then: "Likely," his father admitted. "Maybe not meet, if we are lucky."

Kitty gazed at them hard. "You really ought to warn your customers about this," she said, her complexion like ice in the middle of the desert.

Shrugging seemed to be a habit Tutan was starting up around her, one that he indulged in now. "Business," he said, once he had taken the time to (as Kitty said) 'figure out whatever the hell I'm saying.'

The young woman brooded over this for a minute. Finally, she glanced up and said, with a wry twist to her mouth, "First of all, tell him that shrugging is really starting to get to me." She waited until Lavin had translated. With a wicked gleam in his eye, Tutan shrugged once more. Then he apologized very nicely, and said, "Okay. I not do it anymore."

Shaking his head, Lavin turned back to Kitty. "And the other thing?" he asked.

"Send everything to my parents in London if I'm killed on the way."

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They were lucky. They met no bandits, but they did come across a party of travelers who had. Kitty felt better after she found out that this particular band had only been held them at gunpoint; none were worse off for the experience, except that all their food had was gone; no money had been taken, nothing of value. Only food. 

"These bandits were nicer than most, then," said Lavin darkly.

They arrived in Alexandria a couple of days later, and stopped at an acquaintance's house, where they apparently stayed whever the passed through the city. The house was something of a mansion, and the owners were plump and smiling. There was a large stable for the dual use of camels and horses. It seemed that the two men Kitty was with weren't the only ones who stopped there.

Lavin and Tutan were resting the camels (and theirselves) for a few days. It turned out that the hotel Kitty was arranged to stay in was only a few blocks away, and Lavin sometimes came visiting. _Courting...? _she wondered passingly, one hot day (but then all days were as hot as a public bathhouse). The thought was pushed out of her mind with haste that would have left Jesse Owens with a silver medal.

Whenever he visited, they would take a walk around the city, generally ending up at someplace where they could sit and have something to drink. Kitty's favorite was a smoothie shop called Beryy Smoothies, where they indeed served berry smoothies, and only berry smoothies. The proprietor, Mr. Beryy (a/n: So now you know I wasn't misspelling it!), soon warmed to the pair. He also saw right off that they weren't a couple, so he didn't embarass them with lewd suggestions. He talked cheerfully about the weather, the latest soccer game, and new kinds of smoothies he was experimenting with.

One day, however, she asked Lavin to take her to the Alexandria Library. "What do you want to go there for?" he said.

Kitty looked at him; he seemed genuinely surprised. "There are some... things I want to look up," she replied.

"I'll take you, but...do you mind if I wait outside?" he asked uneasily. She didn't even have to say anything before he answered the question brewing in her. "I don't like books," he said. "They...creep me out." And he shrugged.

"Again with the infernal shrugging!" Kitty frowned in exasperation, which set him off laughing.

They borrowed camels from Tutan, who was lying down in his room with a wet cloth on his head. He claimed he detected the signs of fever, but Kitty had opened the door once to find him dancing hip-hop style to the Fall Out Boy's 'This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race'. She had closed the door before he noticed, and spent a minute leaning against the wall by his room, her lungs heaving as she struggled not to laugh.

The library was an impressive building built near the foundation of the first library, shaped something like a conch shell on the outside. A flattish, glass-and-metal conch shell. A few tourists gave her funny looks, and Kitty thought they had a good reason; the smooth stone leading up to the library did not look as if camels regularly traversed it. Without warning, she slid off, gave the camel's lead to Lavin, and walked fast to the door.

Once inside, Kitty took a moment to look around. Off to her left was a bookstore; various customers searched through the rows and rows of books that Kitty could see even from the door. To her right were wooden benches, where mothers were cleaning their children's mouths. The children, of course, rebelled by instinct.

In front of her, a hundred feet or so off, was a marble staircase that stretched up several floors, and to its right was a long desk, divided into sections such as 'Information', 'Getting a Membership', and so on.

She walked over to the Information desk, where a middle-aged, dark-skinned woman with graying hair reclined in a comfortable-looking chair. "Excuse me," she said nervously. "Is there a section for books from the old library?"

The woman stared at Kitty for a moment, and Kitty had a sudden urge to say she hd to go to the bathroom, just to get away from that stare. She was one of the strict schoolteacher type, the kind who gave you _the stare, _the one that made you squirm like a large assortment of bugs were crawling around in your underwear. She was even wearing pince-nez. "Third floor," she said, after what seemed like minutes but which was really only a matter of seconds.

"Thank you," said a relieved Kitty, turning quickly. She took a few steps. Then came the woman's voice: "STOP!"

Kitty turned again. Apprehensively, she said, "Pardon?"

The woman's eyes shone with joy, which was somehow far more ants-in-your-pants inducing than her glare. "You have _such_ an aura," she said happily, almost...dreamily. "Beautiful, beautiful aura." Then she seemed to come to herself. "Use it well," she said briskly, and moved out from behind the counter.

"But-" Kitty started to question her, but the woman snapped through the sentence like a slave driver's whip.

"Can't talk now," she said, "it's my lunch break."

And before Kitty could collect her thoughts, the woman was gone, out the door like a short gust of wind. Kitty gave up after a moment, and, hands in her pockets, started up the staircase. She much preferred it to the elevator, but she hadn't counted on there being_ so many _stairs. She was breathing hard by the time she got to the second floor, fit as she was, and she was forced to plop down on a bench nearby.

Once she had regained her breath, she took the rest of the stairs two at a time. She was so close...to what? she asked herself. It didn't matter, she decided. She was eager for some reason or another, and she would find out why eventually, wouldn't she?

Two guards stood outside the room, who checked her with metal detectors and then checked papers she had acquired permitting her to enter the room and study its secrets.

The room which held the books of Old Alexandria was wonderful. It was that book smell, that wonderful, wonderful smell of parchment multipled a thousand-fold. She felt like she was in heaven. _Is Nathaniel? _she wondered suddenly. _Does such a place even exist?_

She shrugged inwardly. Then, gazing happily upon all the scrolls, she set to work with a will.

The scrolls were wonderful, and she perused them for around two hours before remembering Lavin, waiting outside. In fact, she discovered, once she got down there, he was sitting in the shade of a cloth umbrella, drinking an iced cappucinno. The camels were tied to a pole a few feet away. "Finally," he cried once she reached the table. "Are you going to have lunch or not? This cafe"-he indicated the building behind him-"makes excellent sandwiches."

So she sat down and had a sandwich, a BLT which wasn't as good as those her mother made, but still pretty good. Once she was finished, she raced back up the stairs without stopping for breath, and once the guards had finished checking her, pulled out a chair she could use and set to work. An hour's work held no results. Neither did two hours'.

Kitty was ready to give up. She was cross, tired, and hungry. Putting back the scrolls she had so far taken out, she was just considering falling asleep at the table when a scroll dropped, like magic (_Maybe it was_, she mused later.) off of the shelf. She picked it up to put it back.

But annoyed as she was, she couldn't help rolling open the sroll, just for a peek.

She gasped. Before her was a list, in tiny, tiny handwriting, of every single demon--spirit, she corrected herself--in existence. And not only that, but the contents of the scroll was changing with every second that passed. Beside each spirit's name was there rank, age, and notable masters. Names were vanishing off the list, appearing out of nowhere. It was incredible. She skimmed through, not stopping to wonder why the scroll was in English. She saw it was in alphabetical order, and when she got to the B section, found Bartimaeus' name. She smiled, but her vision blurred, and she realized she was crying.

She brushed the tears away and went further down the list. It was disconcerting, though, seeing names and data popping up and disappearing in the blink of an eye. She reached L, M, N...

And stopped.

Near the beginning of the N section, she saw another familiar name.

_Nathaniel._

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**iii - Nathaniel**

Nathaniel was bored. Very bored. The magician world was still unaware of his existence, and all he had to do was laze on his misty back and stare at mist, mist, and... You get three guesses, and the first two don't count: mist.

And then he felt an odd...sensation, beginning on his very misty toes and ending up in his very misty eyeballs. Excitement rose in his mind. Was this a Summoning? Bartimaeus had described it often, and he was sure this must be it. Pins-and-needles, but mistier.

Earth pulled him down, down...his essence was speeding, faster and faster, and he arranged himself into the form of his own body, back when he'd been human. Wearing an Armani suit, he struck the elemental walls, pounded through them, and zipped into a pentacle.

Shock invaded his entire body, much as the Summoning had. Standing a few feet from him, in another pentacle, was Kitty Jones.

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**Whew. This is by far my longest chapter. **

**I really have no idea what the interior of the Alexandria Library is like, so I'm sort of basing it on that of the British Library, which I _have _been to. Although even that is a hazy memory.**

**Many, many thanks to those of you have reviewed whenever you could (or if I forced you, thank you for putting up with it in good humor). I'm talking about: Jarlaxle Baenre, penwriter95, and Akara Rhulain. Give 'em a big round of applause! I would give the three of you cookies, but... Well, I don't now where Jarlaxle lives, penwriter lives several thousand miles away, and Akara is halfway across the city.**

**At the end of each chapter, I'll be posting a list of who was good and posted a review for the chapter before. If you're good and review Daddy Ano's chapter, you'll end up on that list! Yes, this is a bribe. No, the only payment you get is seeing your name on the list of those who won the Ano-Nimmus Award for Honoring Those Who Reviewed the Last Bloody Chapter.**

**Cheers,**

**ano**


	13. Chapter 12: Nathaniel

**A LONG A/N **

**Hey all! Here's another chapter, just for you! And you, and you, and you, and you, and you... Aah, there are too many of you!**

**As far as I know, I currently have fourth-most reviews for a story in this category. I'm so proud!  
**

**1. AgiVega's The Forbidden Heir (734)  
2. Musica Diabolos's The Island of Phasma Mortuus (157)  
3. XxBlackChaosxX's Ptolemy's Return (117)  
And me:  
4. ano-nimmus's Nouda's Revenge (91)**

**YAY! I highly doubt I can pass AgiVega, but hopefully I'll go by the other two... I have a general feeling that this story is going to have between 20 and 25 chapters, but I'm really not sure. **

**A recap on the last chapter, for those of you who forget: Bartimaeus returns to the Other Place, but decides not to tell Nathaniel about Farrar's Summoning him. Kitty journeys with the Hiranandanis to Alexandria, where she begins to suspect Lavin of courting her. She gets acquainted with the city, and goes to the Alexandria Library. There she meets a woman who acts very oddly towards her. Later, in a room of scrolls from the old library, she discovers that Nathaniel is, in fact, alive. Nathaniel is summoned.**

**I got several reviews telling me that djinn can't eat human food, and now I do remember that tiny detail... But just pretend they can; remember it's fanfiction, so it's forgivable. Anyhow, read on!****  
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* * *

"Is that you," Kitty said tentatively, "Nathaniel?" 

The former human could only stare in disbelief. At last he voiced his disbelief with three desperate words: "What the hell?"

Kitty looked him in the eye, and he could see that, despite the limit of words spoken between them, she was already stretching herself. "Are you Nathaniel or not?" she hissed. "Are you Nathaniel, who was more often than not John Mandrake, the lying, teenage government man?"

Nathaniel couldn't think; his normal demeanor was totally thrown off by the sight of Kitty, who he had wondered about so often, who had tormented his very misty mind for so long...

"Right," he said at last, unable to cope without some form of wonder. "This isn't really happening, is it? I've finally going barking mad, like Bartimaeus said."

He noticed that her lower lip was trembling, that she was on the verge of tears. Even if she was a hallucination, he knew he coudn't bear to see her cry. "I'm Nathaniel," he said a moment after he had decided this.

Kitty looked up; a tear streaked down her cheek like a watery comet, and she wiped it away. There was an awkwardly pregnant silence. "How-" the former magician began. Then he seemed to change his mind and move to another question. "Why did you summon me?" he said.

The young woman shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe just to see if you were...you. Maybe to find out how in God's name you ended up as a djinni." She gave a watery smile.

"Was that a joke?"

"Not really. I'm still Mr. Button's apprentice, inwardly. Ever curious." They didn't speak for a moment. "So...how in God's name did you end up as a a djinni?"

Nathaniel brushed some imaginary lint off of his suit. "I'm not totally sure. I asked Bartimaeus, but his memories seem to be somewhat foggy. I can tell you what _I _remember, little as it is."

"Please do," said Kitty, pulling a notebook out of her purse. So for the second time, Nathaniel went through his relatively short story with as much detail as he could. But with words, how could he describe the voice, the shock that came to him when he realized that he was a _djinni_, one of those which he had controlled for so many years. He had to, with Bartimaeus, because the mist wouldn't have shown up against all the rest of the mist.

Suddenly Mrs. Underwood's voice came back to him, from when he was younger. She had been showing him a picture of a purple fish seized by a diver, in a newspaper, smiling at him, and saying, _"A picture is worth a thousand, thousand words, Nathaniel. See, there's hardly any need for the article, you can guess it's about a man who caught a great big purple fish. Keep it in mind, might help someday."_

He stopped in the middle of his story. Would it help...? He was desperate to be of some help. He had sat on his bum (mentally) doing nothing but look around at mist, and now that he had a chance to do something other... He started at the beginning again, but this time he changed. Now he was mist, mist... _Damn that mist, _he thought a bit rebelliously. And using pictures, he showed her everything.

When he had finished, he once more became Nathaniel-in-a-suit. Scratching the back of his neck, he looked awkward, and Kitty almost smiled despite herself. "That's...interesting," she said. "But give me a minute to think. I have no idea what to do now." She laughed slightly.

"Why don't you just send me back to the Other Place?" Nathaniel suggested. It wasn't really what he wanted, but he didn't want to be forgotten as she thought.

She looked at him as if he were crazy. "Why would I do that? If someone you knew came to life all of a sudden, would you willingly send them back to the grave?"

His mouth twisted wryly. "Most of them, yes." She looked at him in confusion. "They were magicians," he explained. Her confusion seemed to be stuck on her face.

"You would send all your companions to the grave?" she asked.

He shrugged in reply. "They were power-hungry fools," he said.

"But some of them must have had a good side," she persisted.

He smiled grimly. "Will wonders never cease? Kitty Jones defending the magicians!"

Irritated, Kitty snapped, "Answer the question!"

"What question?" he asked innocently. "I distinctly did _not _hear a question in the past two minutes or so."

She sighed; "Answer the _statement_, then!" Under her breath, she added, "You're getting more and more like Bartimaeus every day..."

Ignoring the last part, his face grew grim again. "Not that I knew of."

"You did," came an uncalled for reply. He looked at her in utter confusion. "You had a good side, I mean."

He did a double take. "Was I that bad?"

"I used to hate you, you know?"

He didn't protest. He knew she had once hated him with a passion unlike that which had driven him to find the Resistance. "But you don't now, do you?" He wasn't sure why he was so eager to have her friendship. Maybe because for so long, he had been friendless... Of course, there had been Bartimaeus, but at the time Nathaniel hadn't really considered him a _friend_, just an accomplice, or--and his face would have gone red with shame if he hadn't been a djinni, able to control his expressions--a slave.

Kitty did not answer. Slowly, at long last, she said, "A part of me...still wants to, because of all you did... You told my parents what they didn't need to know, I mean, about my being in the Resistance and all, and we only made up about it just before I went to Bruges--I mean, a couple of weeks ago, really." She sighed, a sad, almost meditative sigh, and Nathaniel instinctively tensed. "You chased me for so long, and on top of all that, you're a magician--erm, or a djinni, now, but... But somehow you made it up to me at the end, with everything that happened, and Nouda. So, yeah. More or less, I've forgiven you." She finished off very abruptly, seemingly embarrassed about her speech.

No matter how embarrassed she was, inwardly, Nathaniel rejoiced. A soup of feelings had dominated so much of his djinni life, and now some of it was cleared up, and it was a _very _refreshing feeling.

Kitty's eyes seemed to light up all of a sudden. "I know!" she said leaning forward in excitement. "I've got an idea!"

"I can see that," Nathaniel observed dryly.

Her eyes shining, Kitty got up and walked out of her pentacle. Nathaniel gawked. "You can't do that!" he managed. "A demon--er, spirit--could just, just _eat you, _right there and then!"

"You aren't really likely to eat me, are you?" Kitty pointed out. "Anyway, all you have to do now is alter your appearance a bit, and then I'll tell everybody that you're an old friend who I just happened to meet in here. I mean, you are a friend," she added, "but you're a pretty new one."

With a _humph_, Nathaniel stepped out of his pentacle and began to change his looks. It was astonishingly easy; he could have done it in an instant, but he stretched it out so Kitty could get used to how he looked, so that if they were caught up in a large crowd, she would know who she was looking for.

They left the summoning room a moment later. Nathaniel now looked like like a man in his late thirties, with buzz-cut brown hair. He had light green eyes, and a hooked nose. He saw some of the guards looking over at him in mild consternation. Nathaniel realized that they were confused because they hadn't seen him enter the building. _I could have gone in fly form and changed in a bathroom somewhere, _he thought regretfully. _No, I suppose that could have led to the same problem._

Before they left the Alexandria Library, Kitty insisted on stopping at the Information desk. "Who was the woman who was here before?" she asked the woman there.

The woman looked confused, and asked, "Well, can you describe her for me? I can't be sure otherwise."

"Um, very average height, with pince-nez, with what they call salt-and-pepper hair, you know? Hard stare."

"Like a schoolteacher?"

"Yeah!"

The woman thought a moment, then said, "I don't know anybody like that who works here."

Kitty frowned. "Then how come you knew she was like a schoolteacher?"

The woman shrugged. "I always had teachers like that. But I can tell you, no one like that works at this desk."

* * *

Nathaniel practically had to drag Kitty away. "What was the problem?" he asked, outside. 

"There was a woman there, before!" Kitty said furiously. "Just like I described her."

"So this woman, now, hasn't seen her. Okay, maybe she doesn't know anyone like that. Maybe she was trying to impress us when she implied she knew everyone at the desk. You have to look at it from _all angles_, Kitty."

"If you do that, nothing'll ever get done due to indecision," the young woman growled. "And-" She stopped suddenly and waved cheerfully. He turned to look and saw a handsome man, African by the look of it. (Nathaniel suddenly realized that he had no idea where they were.) Two camels followed him like sheep following shepherd. He felt something hard close around his heart, and a coldness seeped into him. Who was this man, who Kitty waved at so freely?

_Damn,_ he thought, _and why do I care? I don't, and that's the truth!_ But he wasn't sure.

The man who he now thought of unconsciously as a rival seemed to be having similar thoughts. "Who is this?" he demanded, his eyebrows drawing together like (Nathaniel had no end of eloquent insults when he was riled) great big black caterpillars crawling all over him and poisoning him with a fatal touch.

Unperturbed, Kitty said, "This is John."--Nathaniel cast her a hurt look, unable to believe she was using his magician name--"He's an old friend of mine, and I just met him in the library. An amazing coincidence, don't you think so?" She cast him a desperate look, and Nathaniel blinked.

"Yes," he said with the authority of a minister, "and a great surprise. Seeing as we haven't seen each other for..." He looked curiously at Kitty. "What was it?"

She spoke dryly, covering up his mistake, "Well, around a month, a month-and-a-half. Have you really forgotten that already?"

Nathaniel, realizing it, said as gallantly as he could under the circumstances, "How could I forget you so quickly? No, I have just had so much to do"--_Something of an overstatement, _he thought--"that I wasn't sure quite when we had last spoken." It might have been his imagination, but he was hopeful that he saw Kitty blush, ever so slightly.

"We should go," she said. "Lavin, John is going to have to come with us on my camel. Do you think it can take the weight?"

Lavin--so _that_ was his name--shrugged. "They are stronger than they look."

"Forward, then," she said cheerfully.

* * *

Once they arrived back, it was arranged for Nathaniel to stay at Kitty's hotel, with the help of some money Tutan lent him. He was delighted when Lavin's countenance darkened even more at the news, and muttered something under his breath. 

"What was that?" Nathaniel asked, smiling.

"Nothing, dji-- Nothing, _John_," Lavin returned. Nathaniel noticed the lapse and looked at him curiously. Had Lavin really started to call him _djinni_? And if so, how could he tell? Nathaniel was sure Kitty had not told the tall young man his secret, and he knew he himself hadn't. What else could he have started to say?

Nathaniel wondered about it, thinking of his warning to Kitty: "You have to look at it from _all angles_."

And her response: "Nothing will ever get done due to indecision." Who was right, he wondered, and at last decided that they both were, in a way.

He had a wonderful time. He and Kitty were able to talk about everything from their favorite foods to the latest bands, which was a mostly onesided conversation on Kitty's part because Nathaniel had never listened to any music except for classical when he was a minister, taking popular and rock 'n' roll to be degradations of singing and true music. But now that he had no dignity to uphold, he was interested when Kitty took him on YouTube and showed him some clips of Green Day, of Avril Lavigne, even of The Beatles.

They went to Beryy Smoothies, where Kitty always got the Straw-blue-raspberry Disaster, and Nathaniel tried out every possible flavor, loving every moment of it, no matter how odd it tasted.

They explored the Alexandria Library, but Kitty never found the scroll of every spirit she had seen before, which she described to him. In the end, she decided that it must have been removed.

After about a month-and-a-half, however, he could feel his essence wearing thin. It was a new experience for him, but one which he took in stride, hanging on to his life in Alexandria (he'd found out where they were after he asked Kitty later on the first day) for another week before he finally approached Kitty about going back to the Other Place. "It aches now," he told her. "It...it's like a strained muscle, except all over."

Kitty looked down, and Nathaniel felt a strange urge to laugh. He would be back, there was no reason to be disappointed, she must've known he would have to go back eventually... Instead, he gave her a hug, feeling like a comforting older brother. "I'll come back soon," he whispered, somehow feeling it was the appropriate tone to use.

Kitty looked up, a slight, sad grin on his face. "You mean I'll Summon you?"

Nathaniel gave her a sheepish grin. "Er, yeah."

He was about to leave, to vanish and leap into the Other Place, when he heard a bugle trumpeting through the street. "What's that?" he asked, moving towards the window. Kitty followed him, and they looked out with a sudden sense of excitement.

What they saw made them blink in surprise and look again. Going down the street was the sort of procession you only saw on cartoons about India; elephants bedecked in jewels and silk cloth, camels likewise, a large canopy perched on the back of the largest elephant, and a man sitting below it, his entire body swathed in pure white cloth. A long procession of camels, of elephants, of men, and even of a crocodile in a cage. The croc lay on its side, it

Nathaniel rubbed his eyes. Crocodile...right?

Then why were there tiny wings on its back? Frowning, he zipped through the first four planes and shocked, found an aura in the huge reptile. A djinni? But it didn't look like any spirit's aura he'd ever seen, and here in Alexandria he had seen plenty of them. It seemed to lie compact in the crocodile's center, a whispering ball of power that spiked every so often towards its back. Why couldn't the djinni turn into a fly or something and slip out between the cage bars? There was no spell encircling the bars.

So it must have been commanded by some magician to lie in the cage like that. But what was keeping it inside? After a moment of the scrutiny that had helped him in the Internal Affairs department, he noticed in surprise and with a great deal of interest that only when shadows passed through the cage did the djinni's aura rise up.

Shrugging, his eyes moved towards the man below the canopy; he looked old, old, and older with every minute past. He looked like he had aged a year for every hour for the past three decades. His face was like a brown pickled prune, and his mouth shrank until it was a toothless hole in his face. His limbs (what little that wasn't covered by cloth) looked like brittle sticks, easy to snap, as did his neck.

He felt Kitty's hand on his shoulder. "You should go," she said. He turned to look at her regretfully, only to be met with a glare. "Now! Before I regret it!"

There was one thing that Nathaniel was confused about. There really wasn't anything that prompted them to stay together, other than the fact that they had worked together with Bartimaeus to defeat Nouda. In fact, Bartimaeus was all that had kept them together. He suspected that the only reason she had Summoned him was because of there roles in the whole Nouda crisis, and that once that wore off, it would be back to the Other Place for good with him.

And for now, he was going back to the Other Place. "Yes, I'll go," he said. "Bye."

"What else can you say?" Kitty said with a crooked smile lurking about her lips.

He closed his eyes, raised his arms (for dramatic effect) and felt the Other Place, wherever it was, calling to him, calling him back, wanting him back after his sojourn on Earth. He opened his eyes as he felt himself leaving.

Just in time to see the door crash off its hinges, to see a middle-aged woman burst in, to see Kitty turn in shock, to see the woman grab Kitty and to see two muscular men bump in behind her. "Kitty!" cried Nathaniel, but he was going, gone without the second going because the Other Place was drawing him in.

A final observation he had been able to make: the middle-aged woman looked rather like a nasty teacher wearing pince-nez.

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**Anticlimax? I wrestled with this chapter. And I'm still not entirely sure about it. Ah, well, I REALLY didn't want this to wait until August. Hopefully, the next one will be up soon, as it's supposed to be a Nouda, and those are generally all short.**

**I am proud to present the Ano-Nimmus Award for Honoring Those Who Reviewed the Last Bloody Chapter to the following people: penwriter95, Thunderstorm101, Jarlaxle Baenre, The known author, berti12 (anon), Shadower Nights, Insane Seto Fangirl, Akara Rhulain,**** XIII Dragon, and Djorlcc****. Thanks SO much!  
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Ye who revieweth not, thy sins shalt punish thee on the Day of Judgement... (a version of refloc's ANs.) XD**

**Remember, you want that award, don't you...?**

**LEAVE A REVIEW IF YOU DO!**

**ano-nimmus  
**


	14. Chapter 13: Nouda

**I'm leaving my Author's Note for you to read after this recession into the mind of the evil bad guy. **

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For the first time in months, Nouda felt strong as he tussled with a minor djinni that had had the misfortune to cross his path. Power flowed through him, filling him with energy he hadn't felt in so, so long... 

He didn't have to think to fight: Detonation after Detonation filed from his fingertips like soldiers--he had taken a gargoyle's shape--Convulsions zipped from his core to his enemy. He didn't have to think of the battle he was part of, and so his thoughts turned to other things. He could remember being a human, millennia ago, a sorceror's apprentice. He had killed his master and thus inherited his master's powers, adding them to his own. He had tormented the people of his country from peasant to ruler, demanding they give him all he wished for, on pain of death. Then had come a young man of another land, wielding powers to match Nouda's own. He had been destroyed, vanquished, thrust into oblivion. He had become nothing, and then he was feeling pain--what pain!--and he had become something again, not a spirit of the kind he had summoned when he was human.

_I will not be conquered this time,_ thought Nouda, striking out with a Detonation. As the djinni died, as it vanished from all life, Earth or Other Place, he turned away and once more his thoughts reached out for his enemies. His servants would take care of the girl. The boy, the one he had killed, he had come back--someone would be sent for him. And as for that insolent fool Bartimaeus, he would be dealt with by Nouda himself.

The girl might already be captured. The moon shone like a lamp overhead as he thought. The boy was alive, he knew now, but was he in the Other Place or here on Earth? The same question went for Bartimaeus.

His essence did not hurt him anymore. No more did Earth slip in the cracks of his essence, stealing it away bit by bit. Now he was like the djinn of the earth. He smiled, a horrid gargoyle grin that somehow darkened his face.

His great servant would take care of everything. All he had to do was give orders; and, of course, he would eventually go hunting for Bartimaeus.

He sprang into the night, a blur of ugly gargoyle that soon vanished from sight.

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**Odd? Who could those servants be? Who is the 'great servant'? And some of you are probably wondering what the heck Jane Farrar has to do with any of this. Rest assured, she'll be back.**

**To Thunderstorm101, and anyone else who was wondering: While, in the Bartimaeus Trilogy, America is still under british rule (sort of), and thus it would be sometime in the 1700s, I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that there are cars in the trilogy. There were not cars in the 1700s. Also, we have to remember that the Bartimaeus Trilogy is in an alternate universe. So there really could be computers and all that. Of course, I could be wrong. But heck, it's just what I think.**

** And the Ano-Nimmus Award for Honoring Those Who Reviewed the Last Bloody Chapter goes to the following people(!): XIII Dragon, jenny-R, The known author, Ueki, wingsgirl1313 (anon), Thundertorm101, penwriter95, kaillinne arami, Bartimaeus Fan (anon), michael moragn (anon)**

**Thank you one and all!**

**That button down there...yeah, the purple one. You see it, don't you? It gives you eternal youth and immortality. Not to mention, you can get a reward! You get that award a few lines above this one! Want it? LEAVE A REVIEW.  
(I know this is weird, seeing as the A/N is almost as long than the chapter, but I had a lot to tell you.)**

**ano-nimmus**

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	15. Chapter 15: Kitty

**I'm SO sorry. I had a huge case of writer's block for months and months and months. I didn't write anything, not even dumb little short stories that never make it on to the internet.**

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**Kitty**

Darkness. A classic way, a classic word, to start with, but nonetheless that is all there was in the dungeon where Kitty sat. It was damp, too, the wetness gently seeping into any clothing rested on the floor--but it was the darkness, ah! what darkness! Such a level of gloom she had never seen!

But she knew that she had not lost her sense of sight, because someone who had been there before her had managed to slice (minimally) into a corner of the door, and every now and then a guard (she supposed) walked by, casting flickering candlelight through the corner crack which soon slipped by, leaving her once more in darkness.

The cell was four feet by four feet; she couldn't lie down, but she wouldn't have wanted to anyway. Whoever had designed her cell hadn't given much thought to the comfort factor of it--comfort or escape routes. The walls and floor were composed of stone blocks and mold, while the door was thick and carved of oak, heralding no escape from those quarters

She had plenty of time to think; no guards came for her, and if she slept too long she would end up on the ground and die of pneumonia from the damp, so all she could do was stand and think. She wasn't sure how long she sent in that cell, but by the time the guards did come for her, she was half-slumped against the wall, her breathing uneasy, knowing even in sleep what her predicament was.

Even her contemplation followed her, pursuing her mercilessly as the Furies. Just once, she wished, her short recesses of standing rest would be dreamless, leaving her to the sundry delights of blandness in sleep. But ghosts followed her their from her past, stroking her chin and gazing at her from behind one-way mirrors they carried everywhere.

If only she could see them! But they hid viciously—(viciously?)—oh, yes, viciously, for she would have liked nothing, _nothing_ better than to see them, to hear them, to understand them.

And oh! the pain she felt because she couldn't.

She was asleep when the guards came. For come they did, two burly men with black executioner's masks, who grabbed her by the arms, waking her with a start. Kitty was suddenly clear as an untainted forest pool. No bleariness remained in her startled countenance; alertness shone in her face, determination worked her mind like clockwork, determination that she would find out who her captor was and why she had been taken there.

They dragged her through several classically fire lit hallways, and Kitty imagined that she saw dark creatures in the flickering shadows. She tried to snarl at the men, "I can walk on my own," but she could only hiss and spit at them, as her vocal cords had become rusty with disuse. She spent the rest of that journey trying to retrain herself to speak. She could feel harsh amusement radiating from her captors.

They arrived at last at a solid oaken door, very like her own cell door, but rising twenty feet high and with ornate bronze handles. An imperial feeling pervaded the air as the doors opened. It had something of an 'open, sesame' effect, with no visible entities behind the doors to open them. There were probably demo—spirits grounded inside the wood who were used as catalysts to open the doors.

Abruptly, she was thrown to the floor. Her hands were free but she was too surprised to catch herself and she fell directly onto her front. Her chin hit the stone floor with a crack; it didn't feel as if anything had fractured, but she could feel an omnipresent bruise rising in her.

Struggling furiously not to cuddle herself, to try and soothe her 'omni-bruise' (Kitty felt her mouth twitching—maybe she was feeling happier because she was out of her cell), she looked up.

And found her voice. "You!"

The tall, schoolteacherly librarian looked down at her, expressionless. Somehow her harsh pince-nez lent a sort of ludicrous air to the scene. Kitty began to giggle.

"She's hysterical," a voice grumbled. Something about it made Kitty look up, and the smile faded on her face. She had not noticed before the large throne situated next to the librarian, or the very large man on it. He half-smiled at her. "Shut her up," he said.

One of the men behind her chuckled, and Kitty turned around just in time to receive an unfortunately well-aimed blow. She fell back on the cold, hard stone floor. She looked at the man on the throne, who was closely inspecting his fingernails. Her gaze was bewildered, accusatory: _What have I ever done to you?_

The librarian's gaze was no longer as frozen as the floor Kitty lay on. It looked almost as if there was…pity in it. Kitty looked directly at her, pleadingly. Their eyes met. The woman shook her head once, so slightly that Kitty though it could have just been a twitch of her head.

And perhaps it had been. She never got a chance to ask.

* * *

The guards and the librarian were ordered to leave the room. The guards seemed reluctant to leave their leader alone with anything that could harm him. One of them whispered something in his ear, and was summarily shoved back onto the floor with such force that Kitty saw one tooth roll down the floor. The man whimpered, "But he ordered us to--"

"You leave him to me," snarled the man on the throne. "Do you honestly think a little girl like _her_"--he looked at her distastefully--"can put me in any danger? She can't be more than..." He glanced at her, a venomous glance. Despite herself, Kitty took half a step back, but then, steeling herself, brought that one foot a half a step forward again.

"...twenty." The man completed his sentence, turning back to his henchman. "Anyway, you've seen me in action." His eyes grew spiteful. "Perhaps the young lady would like to see you shrivel up until you're nothing but a husk."

"I would, actually." Kitty's voice, though still rusty from disuse, sounded unnaturally loud in that large stone room.

"Ha! She's got some spice in her!" murmured the evil-looking man. "What do _you_ think, my dear?" he silkily asked the librarian, whose head looked cooler than anyone else's in the room.

She snorted. "As if you care what I think. A lowly 'demon', am I, and you ask _my_ opinion?"

Kitty's gaze shot over to her. Her eyes widened.

_"You're a __spirit?!"_ she blurted out, proud that she hadn't even _begun_ to say the word 'demon', despite its presence in the back of her mind.

The spirit looked briefly unsettled as she turned to Kitty.

Then her gaze focused, and Kitty was shocked then by the intensity held in that gaze. It said, "What do you know?" It said, "Spirit? Not demon?" It said, "Are you crazy?"

Most of all, it said, "We shall have to talk."

She turned back after that moment, that single burning moment, when their eyes met and said that much. Kitty hoped the man had not seen that look.

The...spirit hurriedly bowed and, along with the guards, walked out. The doors smoothly shut behind them.

There was silence, cold silence made colder by the dank setting of the room. Idly, a thought entered Kitty's head: why did setting matter? Why did it affect the feelings of people? Why did--

She was cut off from this line of thought by the sudden voice of the man, who had reseated himself on his ugly throne. "You are Kitty Jones, Clara Bell, and Lizzie Temple. Am I correct?"

She did not answer right away. Instead, she thought, _Well, he gets straight to the point. _She giggled. Her mother had often said jokingly that Kitty should only marry someone who got straight to the point. She had always looked at Kitty's father, who had a hard time getting to _any_ point, when she said this.

She began to answer, but his black brows met as he frowned at her, rather as if she were a petulant child. _"Am I correct?"_

Kitty waited until his face was smooth as the stone walls around them before she answered.

"I suppose you could say that..." she murmured.

He gave a harsh laugh. "Could I really?"

She didn't know what to say, so she remained silent.

"Can't you speak?" he asked, almost teasingly. She said nothing.

His brow darkened and he rose from his seat. He bent down to the level of her ear, which he cupped in his hand. "Can't you speak?" he whispered, so softly she almost didn't hear it. Still she said nothing, hating him suddenly, passionately, so that even if she'd wanted to answer the fire burning in her breast would have glued her mouth shut. Why was she here, anyway?

She _felt _him frown at her. But she _heard _him take in a deep breath. And oh, she _heard _him scream in her hear.

"OR CAN'T YOU HEAR?"

The words blasted through her eardrum with something more than just volume. _Magic? _she thought hazily. _But_ he's_ human, right?_

_Right? Right? Right? _

Everything seemed to echo inside her. She wanted to scream, to cry. To punch the scumbag who had done this to her, even if he was holding her up at the moment. Louder, louder. She became frenzied in her fear of what was happening to her. She _did_ scream, she_ did_ cry.

She _did_ punch him. He _did _drop her.

She hit the ground, the stone floor rising to meet her.

Oh, and she _did _faint.

* * *

When she woke up, the very first thing she was aware of was that everything was dark again.

She sat there, silent. She could feel that frenzied feeling was climbing towards her mouth again. She slowed her breathing in an attempt to calm herself down. Her throat felt oddly raw, as if she had been screaming and screaming.

She remembered screaming once. And then... had she fainted? It was an odd feeling, knowing that something had pressurized you so much that all your body would do was force you to sleep.

Sleep? Actually, she did feel better. Perhaps she should faint more often.

_Ridiculous_, she thought. _Fainting is not something I should get into. Especially not since I'm trapped in a dreary castle in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no way of escape. _

She considered this. Nathaniel was stuck in the Other Place. Her only chance was if someone Summoned him and he somehow got away from them.

Unlikely, to say the least. And anyway, he wouldn't know where she was. Maybe she was in the middle of a desert. Maybe she was on the outskirts of Alexandria. Maybe--the thought occurred to her--maybe she was in another country entirely. Maybe she'd been taken to...Denmark, or somewhere.

Her heart was sinking lower and lower. It was in about the vicinity of her ankles, and getting dangerously lower.

She got up, but there wasn't a lot of space to pace in. She sat down again, and then she heard it; clinking sound. Keys! She bolted up again and got in a fighting pose. Maybe--just maybe she could kick one of the guards in the shin and escape!

The door swung open. Kitty tensed herself for a fight. Her heart was steadily rising. It was almost where it was supposed to be, in her chest. Then she saw who it was. She sighed. "You stick like a bad penny," she told the spirit.

The librarian glared at Kitty through her pince-nez. "I was interested," she said, not deigning to answer Kitty's remark, "about you."

Kitty waited for a moment. "Is that it? Because, you know, I'm interested in me, too. I'm interested in saving my skin from this miserable castle and all of the maniacs who live here."

The librarian grimaced in an attempt not to smile. She glanced behind her, and then closed the door before Kitty could say anything. They heard a lock _click_ on the outside of the door.

"Why did you do that?" Kitty asked furiously. "I could have tried to escape." She jumped when a voice came out of the darkness across from her

"I wouldn't have--couldn't have let you," the librarian corrected herself. "The master of the castle has bound me to it unless he takes me with him on his walks outside. But that doesn't matter now."

"But you're trapped in here too!" said Kitty, before she remembered that spirits could shapeshift.

The spirit--Kitty realized she didn't know if it was a, a foliot, or a marid, or whatever--lit a spark in the air, showing Kitty the look of high disdain etched on her face.

"Alright, alright," said Kitty, irritably. "You might as well tell me why you came here. To brighten my hopes and then shatter them? I wouldn't put it past you."

Now the spirit looked hurt. Kitty sighed. "Okay, I'm sorry. Will you forgive me and tell me what you came here for? I'm sure it was somehow meant to be beneficial to me."

"I don't normally tell people about this," said the spirit, after a short silence. "I don't think very many know about this. You see, there's another kind of djinn besides the ones in the Other Place..."

Kitty sat, and listened, and wondered.

* * *

**Thank you everybody, for putting up with my long silences on FanFiction. Thank you for not bombarding me with hate mail. This may or may not have lived up to your expectations, but thank you for reading it anyway.**

**The ANAFHTWRTLBC goes to the following wonderful people...**

**XIII Dragon, kaillinne arami, The known author, the-emerald-raven, Thunderstorm101, wingsgirl1313, Soul Collecter, Jarlaxle Baenre (my most faithful reviewer! thankyouthankyouthankyou!), Kishuroxmysox, NaginiFay, T (anon.), DYoda (anon.), The Wineglass, and LM1991.**

**Thank you all so much!**

**ano-nimmus**

**P.S. For any FOB fans out there who don't know yet, A NEW ALBUM IS COMING OUT SOON! 11/4/08. IT'S CALLED 'FOLIE A DEUX'. NEW SINGLE OUT ON 09/15/08 (I think)!! **

**(Sorry, others, didn't mean to alarm you.)**


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